Sarah's work has been exhibited in galleries such as Vermont Studio Center; the Cultural Center of Polecni, Pieksamaki, Finland; Reinberger Gallery, Cleveland Institute of Art; and SPACES gallery, Cleveland, among others. Her awards have included a CAA Tuition Grant (2000-2002); a Merit Scholarship and Grant to the Vermont Studio Center (1999); and a Merit Scholarship for the University of Michigan (1998).

Degree MFA, Ceramics from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University; BFA, Studio Art from Kent State

Kautenburger's sculpture functions to contain sensations of the natural environment, housing and presenting natural phenomena as an invitation for anyone so inclined to poetic ponderance. Work often involves insect habitats (crickets and honeybees), natural material from the Rocky River basin, as well as substances collected from his bee yard, such as propolis, wax, and pollens.

He is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and has exhibitited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Allentown Museum of Art, among others. He has an MFA in Ceramics from Tyler School of Art, and a BFA from Kent State University.

He has been teaching at CIA since 2001, where he teaches Foundation Design and Environment, Art and Engaged Practice.

Degree MFA, University of Texas at San Antonio; BFA, Truman State University

Kuehnle has had solo shows at museums, galleries and universities in the United States and internationally. His recent solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York was reviewed in the New York Times. In 2016 Kuehnle received a Creative Workforce Fellowship, a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture funded by the citizens of Cuyahoga County. In the fall of 2016 Kuehnle exhibited new monumentally scaled site specific inflatables at the Akron Art Museum in an exhibit titled, Wiggle, Giggle, Jiggle. In 2014, he was selected for the national survey exhibition State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. As a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow in Japan, 2008, he pursued his interest in public art and sculpture.

Focusing on sculpture and performance, Kuehnle works in various media and has exhibited his projects nationally and internationally. His recent work features site-specific inflatable installations in museums as well as public performance treks through rural and urban cities in the U.S. such as Chicago, Detroit, Austin, St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Antonio, Dallas, and New York as well as international performances in Japan, Italy, and Finland.

Degree MFA, Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art

Scott Ligon is an award-winning digital artist and filmmaker. He is the coordinator for the digital foundation curriculum at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

He received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art where he studied under renowned original abstract expressionist Grace Hartigan and attended “Perspectives on Criticism” classes taught by Robert Storr, formerly senior curator of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Early in his career, Scott made a living as a graphic designer and illustrator for ad agencies around the Washington DC area. This enabled Scott to learn digital art software. Scott utilized his perspective as a painter to explore the expansive possibilities of digital technology as an art- making tool.

Scott is the author of Digital Art Revolution, Creating Fine Art with Photoshop. The book was published in March 2010 by Watson-Guptill, a division of Random House, the premiere publisher in books. The book is currently in its second printing and an eBook version was released in July 2011, available for Kindle, Nook, iPad and other eBook formats.

His award-winning animated short film, Escape Velocity, about the connection between ADHD and creativity, has played in festivals and theaters all over the world. Escape Velocity plays regularly on the Documentary Channel in the USA and Shorts TV in Europe. The film recently signed a third television deal with LAPTV, a partnership of four major entertainment giants, 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, and Fox TV in Latin America. The film is distributed by Shorts International, the world’s leading short film brand.

He has recently completed his second short film, Figure/Ground about the death of his father. It features veteran actor Allan Kulakow who has been in several movies, including Death by Dawn, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and HBO’s Something the Lord Made. He appeared as the Joint Chief of Staff on NBC’s West Wing. Figure/Ground is currently making a film festival tour and was recently signed to an exclusive distribution agreement with Future Shorts in London. Future Shorts is a short film distributor whose partners include HBO and Sony Computer Entertainment.

Scott is currently working on his first feature film, a documentary about creativity called The Big Picture.

I am concerned with how artists achieve knowledge and how they structure knowledge. This intersects with my concern as a teacher and artist, to encourage participants to reflect on the processes that an artist goes through--for example, an intuitive creative thinking process, intentional purposeful engagement, and adherence to a model or system.

These thought processes can be contextualized further by situating them within larger theories of knowledge production, as outlined by W. J. T. Mitchell: “semiotics, structuralism, deconstruction, system theory, speech at theory, ordinary language philosophy and now image science or critical iconology”.

To convey this notion of action as a mode of knowledge production, I use specific symbols for my work, one of these: boards that are pre-manufactured with three vertical slots and one horizontal slot (plywood).

From the viewer’s perspective, the board has the option to hold various information. From my perspective, I see this as a concept to display information to exercise the different links in its display from one board to another. My environment is a grid—one of the hallmarks of modernist abstraction and capable, as a visual symbol, of signifying a whole system of art production and thought. This idea is depends on the perspective of the viewer and how that viewer is situated in a distributed network of production and reception of the information about this subject.

Crucially for me, the painting, the paper, and the board (as in my recent production), simulate the portability of information. I am interested in its mobility as a sign in which sender and recipient receive the same information but decode it differently depending on their respective environments.

On faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Art since 2006, Barbara Chira has also been Academic Director of CIA's burgeoning academic vision, Cores + Connections, since July, 2013: core values of faculty mentorship, studio and academic rigor, and state-of-the-art curriculum, all power extensive connections for student engagement in community-based learning, real-world professional projects, and socially engaged practices in art and design. Chira is also a practicing artist, having maintained a studio in the Superior Arts Corridor since 2002. Her commitment to the ideals of a social practice has included projects with homeless women and children at the Salvation Army's Harbor Light Complex and with HIV-positive children in Youngstown (exhibited at the McDonough Museum of Art). In more recent years, she has created temporary spaces in public and facilitated strangers coming together in meaningful conversation. At CIA, Chira has been championing new socially engaged project courses for students, related to poverty, homelessness, health care, and the environment, with partners including the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Metroparks, and Cuyahoga County's homeless service organizations. This commitment to socially engaged art is also informed by Chira's previous 12-year career in community health and human services in the County, including several years as a case manager working with people in their homes in Cleveland's highest-poverty neighborhoods.

Terry J. Clark II earned his MFA in Painting from Kent State University in 2004 and his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2002. Terry’s artworks have been featured at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ingenuity Festival, Asterisk Gallery, and CSU Art Gallery. Terry has taught 2D and 3D design at Cleveland State University and drawing at CIA. Terry paints with acrylic and watercolor paints and makes sculpture from found objects. His subject matter inspiration comes from Earth Sciences and observing the natural world. The concepts of natural light, optics, and color are recurring themes found in his artworks.